Part 3

"I tried to teach her," explained Miss Sherrill to her brother. "But I think, after all, she taught me the most. She is the dearest little thing, and asks the strangest questions! When I look at her grave sweet face, and hear her slow, sweet voice making wise answers, and asking wise questions, a sort of baby wisdom, you know, I can only repeat over and over the words: 'Of such is the kingdom of heaven.' To-day I told her the story of Jesus taking the little children up in his arms and blessing them. She listened with that thoughtful look in her eyes which is so wonderful, then suddenly she held up her pretty arms and said in the most coaxing tones: 'Take little Sate to Him, and let Him bless her, yight away.' Tremaine, I could hardly keep back the tears. Do you think He can be going to call her soon?"

"Not necessarily at all. There is no reason why a little child should not live very close to Him on earth. I hope that little girl has a great work to do for Christ in this world. She has a very sweet face."

MOVING DAY.

IT was Kitty's moving day. This is how it happened: One Saturday morning Mr. Blake came into the barn and said: "John, we will be ready to draw in that hay by ten o'clock. We will fill up the bay first. As soon as you feed the horses you may as well take a look for hens' nests. We do not want to cover up any hens this year!"

Now I do not suppose that Kitty really understood what they were saying; probably the sound of their voices alarmed her and she concluded to move. First she set out to hunt up a home. There was the empty clothes basket; Bridget had been late with her ironing and had set the basket emptied of the clean clothes down in a hurry, and a blanket had been thrown into it. Walking into the deserted laundry on her round of house hunting Kitty spied this and decided that it was just the place. And so she set about moving her family. By ten o'clock it was accomplished and a happier group it would be hard to find than Kitty and her little kitties were when Bridget going after the basket found them having a grand frolic. It seemed such a pity to disturb them! But kind-hearted Bridget brought an unused basket and very tenderly moved the family once more. Mother Kitty seemed quite satisfied, though rather shy of visitors aside from Bridget, whom she seems to look upon as a friend.

LOU.

_Volume 13, Number 16._ Copyright, 1886, by D. LOTHROP & CO. _Feb. 20, 1886._

THE PANSY.

WHERE I WENT, AND WHAT I SAW.

I STARTED from Cincinnati. Only a short ride on the "Bee Line" and I reached Dayton. A beautiful little city; looking, after the greatness and the noise, and the smoke of Cincinnati, like a pretty little village nestling in among trees. Yet when one forgets the large places, Dayton is quite a city. However, it is not about the _city_ that I want to tell you, but rather about a home there.

A lovely home. In the rooms are gathered all the beautiful things which go to make up a pretty house; carpets and curtains, and easy chairs and lovely plush-covered sofas, and pictures, and books, and flowers, and birds. I cannot think of anything that they lacked. Yet all these do not make lovely _homes_. I have been in places filled with all the beauties which money could buy, and arranged with all the care which refined taste could give, yet which were not homes at all, but great beautiful cold _rooms_! Haven't you been in places where the carpets were only ingrain, or perhaps rag, or where there was even no carpet at all, and the chairs were plain wooden ones, and the pictures on the walls were only a few cheap mottoes, yet which was all full of gentle words, and cheery smiles, and unselfishness in little things? Such places are sure to be homes. I have discovered that the furniture makes very little difference, after all. Well, the house at which I stopped was a _home_ in the truest sense of the word. I shall never think of the sweet Christian lady who is at its head, without feeling thankful to God for having made so good and true a woman, and given her so many beautiful things to use in making others happy.

After all that, I am afraid you will be astonished that I should only tell you the story of one member of the family. But you can't think how much she interested me. I reached the home late at night and went at once to my room. In the early morning I was awakened by a loud call from a voice downstairs. "Clara!" shouted the shrill voice, then waited, and seeming to get no reply, screamed again, "Clara!" with no better success than before. This was repeated I should think a dozen times; until from being only amused I became half-vexed. I thought it very strange that in so fine a house and with so many evidences of culture, the mistress should allow a servant to stand in the hall below and scream after any one in that way. Then I wondered who "Clara" was, and why in the world she did not answer the call; it did not seem possible that she could be asleep, after her name had been rung out so often. I buried my head in the pillows and tried to take another nap; but that was impossible; there that persistent servant stood, and shouted out at intervals that one name, dwelling on each letter until it seemed to me that the name was a half-hour long! At last I arose in despair, and began to make my toilet; only hoping that "Clara's" slumbers had been disturbed as well as my own.

When I made my way to the back parlor, none of the family was in sight, but in the middle of the floor looking at me with doubtful eyes, as though she would like to know where I came from, and what right I had there, was a great green parrot! I was not very well acquainted with parrots, so I stood at a respectful distance, but I thought it was proper to be courteous, and I said "Good-morning!"

To this I received no sort of reply; the creature put her head on one side and looked somewhat disdainful; then raising her voice to a loud shrill note, she called "C-l-a-r-a!" The mystery was explained! Here was the "servant" who had shown such ill breeding in the beautiful home.

Presently we went in to breakfast, and Polly parrot went along. She moved about the dining-room, wherever she chose, and was very quiet, until one of the young ladies whose name I discovered was "Clara," went away to attend to some household duty; then Miss Polly began her cry for "C-l-a-r-a" so loud we could hardly converse. "Polly," said her mistress, "you must be quiet; you disturb us; you cannot go to Clara, she is busy."

What did that parrot do but throw herself on her back, kick her clumsy feet into the air, and cry with all her might! I saw no tears, it is true; but if I had not been looking on, I would have been sure that a very spunky child was having a fit of crying. Imagine my astonishment! I had never heard a parrot cry; did not know that it was ever one of their accomplishments. Being a parrot, what would have been extremely disagreeable in a child, was really as funny as possible, and I laughed until I was in danger of shedding tears myself. Still the passionate whine went on. Suddenly the back parlor door was opened slightly, and a sweet voice said: "Mamma, you may let Polly come to me; I am not doing anything which she will disturb."

"Polly," said her mistress, "do you hear that? Get up. Clara says you may go where she is."

Instantly the parrot rolled over on her side, and burst into the most jubilant peal of laughter I ever heard--"Ha, ha, ha! ho, ho!" triumph in every note.

Then she straightened herself up, shook out her feathers, and waddled triumphantly out of the room.

"She is a curious creature," said the lady; "quite a study. We have not had her long, and it is very amusing to us; we know the habits and customs of the family from whom she came almost as well as though we had lived with them. You know parrots get all their knowledge by imitation. Isn't it remarkable, and rather startling when one stops to think of it, that even a parrot can produce your faults and foibles for others to laugh at? I often wonder what I am teaching her, unintentionally, which will astonish some one else."

"It is wonderful!" I said. And then I fell to wondering whether it was a girl or boy who had taught that parrot to lie on its back and cry because it couldn't have its own way. And what sort of a man or woman such a child would be likely to make.

I doubt whether the child, whoever he was, would have done it before me--a stranger--and here the parrot had told me all about it!

PANSY.

- - - - - - -

AUNT ESTHER was trying very hard to persuade little Eddy to retire at sunset, using as an argument that the little chickens always went to roost at that time.

"Yes," replied the wide awake little Eddy, "but the old hens always goes with them, auntie."

MY BRAINLESS ACQUAINTANCE.

BY PARANETE.

IV.--MY BRAINLESS ACQUAINTANCE SWALLOWED.

"WHEN the box was opened," the pin continued, "all the papers were taken out, and carried to a large dry goods store in what seemed to me a very large city. We were put just behind one of the large glass windows, where everybody could see us, and we felt quite proud, and much enjoyed looking at all the strange things, and at people who passed.

"One by one the papers were sold, until finally ours was the only one left, and we remained so long in the window that we began to think we should never get out. By that time we were tired of staring out at the street all the time, and wanted a change. One day a lady came into the store and asked the clerk for some pins.

"So he came over to the window and took us out. How delighted we were! The lady put us in her little satchel, and soon we felt ourselves rolling along the street in a carriage. Pretty soon we were taken out and laid in the bureau drawer of the lady's room, where we remained a long while. Then she laid us on the little shelf belonging to the bureau, where we could see everything that went on in the room.

"One evening I was put in the lady's collar, and went to a great room, brightly lighted, where my mistress danced with gentlemen all the evening. I enjoyed it very much, because it was so strange, and because I have no feelings; but my mistress grew very tired and sleepy as soon as the ball, for that is what she called it, was over.

"At night, or rather early in the morning, when we reached home, she put me on the pin-cushion, where I found many of my former acquaintances.

"Now our life grew rather dull. I think winter-time came, and my mistress removed to a warmer room. After a long, long while, during which we saw no one, when the birds returned, and the buds came on the trees, she moved back again, but now there was somebody with her--a little bit of a baby! How cute it was! We pins discussed it a great deal, and grew to loving it very much.

"One day its nurse took it out to ride in its little carriage, and took me (how delighted I was!) to pin its dress. We went a long way off, to a part of the city where the houses were smaller, and the yards larger, and there were more flowers and trees. The nurse stopped in front of one of the little white houses, and walked in, rolling the baby-carriage before her. She called the woman who came to the door 'mother,' so I supposed that this was her former home. Her mother took her to another room, and they were gone quite awhile. So the baby for something to do, and putting up its fat little hand, took hold of me, and tried to pull me out of its dress.

"Now I knew that the baby put everything in its mouth that it could, so I stuck on just as hard as I could; but it tugged away at me, finally got me out, and put me in its mouth, much to my dismay. Not only was it very disagreeable for me to be there, but I knew there was danger of the baby's swallowing me. Still, I could do nothing. The little one chewed me and poked me around with its tongue, until finally, by a mis-poke--as you might say--it sent me down its throat, and there I stuck. Then, O, what a commotion there was! The child screamed slightly, swallowed, and gurgled, and choked, and I--O, my dear friend, you cannot imagine my state of mind! To think I should be the cause of such suffering, and possibly the death of one I loved so much!

"Finally the noise that the child made brought the nurse and her mother to the room. 'Mercy on us!' exclaimed the former, 'the child is choking to death!'

"The mother took the baby on her lap, and pounded, actually pounded, on its back! But this treatment was effectual, though apparently cruel, for the pounding sent me on the floor, out of the baby's mouth! I cannot express my delight in the feeble words that our language possesses. I was in ecstasies. The nurse's mother picked me up, and seeing where I had come from, replaced me in the child's dress, cautioning her daughter to keep watch of me.

"Then we speedily returned home. The story was recounted with many apologies on the part of the nurse. I think the baby's mother would have discharged the poor girl, only, as she afterwards remarked to her husband, 'that was a very difficult season to get good nurses.'

"That night I was replaced on the cushion, and was not taken off for what seemed to me ages. I was in a part of the cushion where beads where, and I suppose my head looked so much like them, that I was not noticed. The other pins were gradually taken out of the paper, used, and either lost or replaced on the cushion, till finally they were all gone, and a new paper was bought. These, of course, were strangers to me, but I soon became acquainted with those on the cushion, and they were very pleasant. On the whole, I did not so much dislike my life then, though naturally enough, I wanted a change.

"The family was quite a large one; beside my mistress and her husband, there was the baby, the nurse, a dear old lady whom I loved very much, a little girl about twelve years old, and a middle-aged lady whom the children called auntie. Before I had been swallowed, I had had occasion to be used by all these people, and so felt acquainted with them.

"Well, one week there was a great commotion in the house. Trunks were being packed, things being folded up and put in packages, and from divers remarks that different members of the household made, I learned that they were all going to Europe, excepting the old lady, because, they said, her health was not good enough to go. This seemed rather strange, for they said they _were_ going for the health of the baby and its mother. I did not know whether I was to go with them or with the old lady, who was to remain with a friend of hers at a town not far distant. (All this I learned by using--not my ears, for I have none, but my sense of hearing.) I rather hoped my fate would be the latter, for although I was anxious to travel, I thought I would be lonely without the old lady, who, though I could neither talk to her, nor understand all of her talk, had become very dear to me.

"Well, my pin-cushion was put in a satchel, and I felt myself rolling along in a carriage. Then I knew no more of where I was going, or what was happening around me, until one morning the satchel was opened, the cushion taken out, I was discovered, and put in the cuff of my mistress. She was in a queer little closet, with two shelves with bedclothes on them against the wall, and a little bit of a window high up.

"Then she went out, and soon I found that we were on the deck of a great steamship, with the boundless ocean all around us."

OUR ALPHABET OF GREAT MEN.

M.--MORSE, SAMUEL FINLEY BREESE.

LONG before he reached the pinnacle of his fame, Samuel Finley Breese Morse passed many quiet summer hours on the pleasant wooded borders of the ravine overlooking the peaceful Sconondoah; and even to this day if you wander through the beautiful Sconondoah wood and hunt out its sequestered nooks, you will find here and there, cut deep in the rugged bark of old forest trees, the initials S. F. B. M., carved by his hand more than half a century ago.

Professor Morse was born at Charlestown, Mass., in 1791. He was the son of a Congregational clergyman, who was the author of a series of school geographies familiar to our fathers and mothers in their schooldays. He was educated at Yale College, and, intending to become a painter, went to London to study art under Benjamin West; but becoming interested in scientific studies he was for many years president of the National Academy of Design in New York. He resided abroad three or four years. On returning home in 1832 the conversation of some gentlemen on shipboard in regard to an experiment which had recently been tried in Paris with the electro-magnet, interested him and started a train of thought which gave him the conception of the idea of the telegraph. The question arose as to the length of time required for the fluid to pass through a wire one hundred feet long. Upon hearing the answer, that it was instantaneous, the thought suggested itself to Prof. Morse that it might be carried to any distance and be the means of transmitting intelligence. Acting upon the thought, he set to work, and before the ship entered New York harbor had conceived and made drawings of the telegraph. He plodded on through weary years endeavoring to bring his invention to perfection, meeting on every hand jeers and ridicule and undergoing many painful reverses in fortune; but for his indomitable will, he would have given up his project long before he succeeded in bringing it before the public, for all thought it a wild scheme which would amount to nothing.

In 1838 he applied to Congress for aid that he might form a line of communication between Washington and Baltimore. Congress was quite disposed to regard the scheme a humbug. But there was a wire stretched from the basement of the Capitol to the ante-room of the Senate Chamber, and after watching "the madman," as Prof. Morse was called, experiment, the committee to whom the matter was referred decided that it was not a humbug, and thirty thousand dollars was appropriated, enabling him to carry out his scheme. Over these wires on the 24th of May, 1844, he sent this message from the rooms of the U. S. Supreme Court to Baltimore: "What hath God wrought!" and connected with this message is quite a pretty little story. Having waited in the gallery of the Senate Chamber till late on the last night of the session to learn the fate of his bill, while a Senator talked against time, he at length became discouraged, and confident that the measure would not be reached that night went to his lodgings and made preparations to return to New York on the morrow. The next morning, at breakfast, a card was brought to him, and upon going to the parlor he found Miss Annie Ellsworth, the daughter of the Commissioner of Patents, who said she had come to congratulate him upon the passage of his bill. In his gladness he promised Miss Ellsworth that as she had been the one to bring him the tidings, she should be the first to send a message over the wires. And it was at her dictation that the words, "What hath God wrought?" were sent.

Success was now assured; honors and riches were his, and those who had been slow to believe in the utility of his invention were now proud of their countryman and delighted to do him homage. Upon going abroad again he was received more as a prince than as a plain American citizen, kings and their subjects giving him honor. It may be believed that even in his wildest flights of fancy Professor Morse did not dream of the rapid spread of the use of his invention, or look forward to the time within a few years, when the telegraph wires would weave together the ends of the world and form a network over the entire Continent.

Five years ago, the only telegraph wire in China was one about six miles in length, stretching from Shanghai to the sea, and used to inform the merchants of the arrival of vessels at the mouth of the river. A line from Pekin to Tientsin was opened a few months ago. The capital of Southern China is in communication with the metropolis of the North, and as Canton was connected by telegraph with the frontier of Tonquin at the outbreak of the late political troubles, the telegraph wires now stretch from Pekin to the most southern boundary of the Chinese Empire, and China, ever slow to adopt foreign ideas, is crossed and re-crossed by wires; we may say the thought which came to Prof. Morse upon that memorable voyage has reached out and taken in the whole world.

FAYE HUNTINGTON.

HOW FATHER CURED HIS HORSE.

"WELL," exclaimed Reuben the story-teller, "father always wanted a horse, because the folks in Greene lived scattered, and he had so far to go to attend funerals, weddings and visit schools; but he never felt as if he could afford to buy one. But one day he was coming afoot from Hildreth, and a stranger asked him to ride.

"Father said: 'That's a handsome horse you're driving. I should like to own him myself.'

"'What will you give for him?' said the man.

"'Do you want to sell?' says father.

"'Yes, I do; and I'll sell cheap, too,' says he.

"'Oh, well,' says father, 'it's no use talking; for I haven't the money to buy with.'

"'Make an offer,' said he.

"'Well, just to put an end to the talk,' father says, 'I'll give you seventy-five dollars.'

"'You may have him,' says the man; 'but you'll repent of your bargain in a week.'

"'Why, what ails the horse?' says father.

"'Ails him? If he has a will to go, he'll go; but, if he takes a notion to stop, you can't start him. I've stood and beat that horse till the sweat ran off of me in streams; I've fired a gun close to his ears; I've burned shavings under him. But he wouldn't budge an inch.'

"'I'll take him,' says father; 'what's his name?'

"'George,' said the man.

"'I shall call him Georgie,' said father.

"Well, father brought him home, and we boys fixed a place for him in the barn, and curried him down and fed him well, and father said, 'Talk to him, boys, and let him know you feel friendly.'

"So we coaxed and petted him, and the next morning father harnessed him and got into the wagon to go. But Georgie wouldn't stir a step. Father got out and patted him, and we brought him apples and clover-tops; and once in a while father would say, 'Get up, Georgie,' but he didn't strike the horse a blow. By and by he says: 'This is going to take time. We'll see which has the most patience, you or I.' So he sat in the wagon and took out his skeletons"--

"Skeletons?" said Poppet, inquiringly.

"Of sermons, you know. Ministers always carry around a little book to put things into they think of when they are out walking or riding or hoeing in the garden.

"Well, father sat two full hours before the horse was ready to start; but, when he did, there was no more trouble for that day. The next morning 'twas the same thing over again, only Georgie give in a little sooner. All the while it seemed as if father couldn't do enough for the horse. He was round the stable, feeding him and fussing over him, and talking to him in his pleasant, gentle way; and the third morning, when he had fed and curried him and harnessed him with his own hands, somehow there was a different look in the horse's eyes. But when father was ready to go, Georgie put his feet together and laid his ears back, and wouldn't stir. Well, Dove was playing about the yard; and she brought her stool and climbed up by the horse's head. Dove, tell what you said to Georgie?"